Twitter is the winner in super-injunction saga

Stephan co-founded YouGov in 2000. He has previously worked as a political campaign manager and is now chair of the Data Strategy Board for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

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Stephan Shakespeare

WHO has done well out of the super-injunction saga? Those celebrities whose names have now been revealed? Not at all. The lawyers? Presumably.

But what of Twitter? The social media platform deemed to have changed the dynamics of the saga and elevated freedom of speech to dazzling heights: the conqueror of tyrants and celebrities who would rather their lives remained private.

GOOD YEAR FOR TWITTER MINDSHARE
In terms of mindshare it has been a good year for Twitter. It started 2011 with an attention score of 26 i.e. a quarter of people were hearing something about them (whether good or bad) and got a small bump (to 31) from the beginnings of the Arab Spring.

It trended around this level for the next four months before the super-injunction controversies saw it rise again, this time to 39.

GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK HIGH PROFILE
This has enabled it to move from 6th to 2nd in terms of the most talked about online brands edging above Google, with only Facebook above it.

Despite this rise in profile, Twitter has yet to really see a significant gain in terms of sentiment. Its overall impression scores have edged up through May from -7 to -3 but it will want to see the increased mindshare get it bigger gains than that and it still remains down in 20th position out of 25 online brands on that measure.

So good news for Twitter in terms of making noise but when we compare its impression score with Facebook’s +19 or Google’s remarkable +68 we can see that it still has a long way to go in terms of turning that noise into positive sentiment.